"Where the Wild Things Are"
(2009, Spike Jonze, USA)
Average Contributor Rating:
Based on three reviews, displayed in descending order.

It’s not easy being a kid, especially a nine year old. I have faint recollections of my nine year old self, but I do remember being frustrated. Be it in school, where I felt like my classmates were holding me back; be it in the playground, where I was falling prey to numerous less-than-savoury influences in the form of other school chums; or be it at home, where I felt my parents simply didn’t understand me – I was a frustrated nine year old. That frustration boiled over into downright anger at society, and after a few too many angry outbursts at home and teachers repeatedly informing my parents that I was having problems in class, I was shipped off to a boarding school for three years, where I was no longer the big smart guy. I was small, weak, just like everyone else – and it just pissed me off more. Looking back, I’m glad I went to the boarding school (though I’m simultaneously not glad, if you get my drift – it was a horrible place), as I wouldn’t be the person I am today if I hadn’t. But watching Where the Wild Things Are brought back all these memories of the person I was – and it was then, walking the streets after the film and reflecting on my childhood, that it hit me; for me, at least, Where the Wild Things Are is the definitive film about what it means to be a kid. Spike Jonze and screenwriter Dave Eggers have taken a classic children’s book, one I loved back in the day, and crafted something universal; something honest; something true; something brilliant.

Max Records plays Max, a hyperactive, attention-seeking brat to any uneducated outsider – indeed, after the opening shots, wherein Max chases his family dog through his house with a fork, one may be biased against the boy and his wanton disregard for his safety and the safety of Poochie. However, the next scene, in which Max builds an igloo and starts a snowball fight with his sister’s friends, sets up what is a moving and painfully truthful portrait of a boy growing up in a world that’s changing its opinion of him too quickly for him to adjust. Jonze and Eggers present in frank detail exactly what it is to be in that awkward transition stage when the world wants us to grow up but we don’t know how, and Records is their immaculate vessel. He traverses so many emotional states it’s hard to know which is the ‘normal’ Max – but then, as he says at the end of the film, “I’m just Max.” Where the Wild Things Are is, boiled down to its very essence, a coming of age story, wherein our young hero learns the value of self and the value of family.

However, Where the Wild Things Are separates itself from lesser children’s films (Cars comes to mind) by not being a children’s film – it is, instead, a film about childhood, about parenthood, and about each group’s perception of the other. When Max bursts into the lives of the Wild Things with a memorable ‘house-smashing’ scene, he escapes being eaten by becoming their King – a paternal figure required to get rid of all the sadness from the island. But even though he rallies them around him for a short period of time, the group bonding over a shared figure to look up to, the cracks in the relationships of the Wild Things are too big to ignore, and Max soon finds himself in a reconciliatory role he can’t possibly hope to live up to. Jonze and Eggers aren’t heavy-handed about the dual message that this conveys, and it’s a triumph of the film that one can come away from it having learned something even if they aren’t a child like Max or a parent like Max’s mother. The film says to its adolescent audience that there’s a world out there that requires a maturity that they may not have yet, but that their parents do, and they should go easy on their mum and dad because of that; to its audience of parents and adults, it says emphatically that children shouldn’t be forced to grow up too early, and that kids aren’t impossible out of intent. These messages may seem obvious, but Jonze and Eggers know that they’re not obvious until the audience is told them, and its this elusiveness of the obvious that they use to their advantage in order to make the film’s overall thematic structure much more affecting and truthful.

Of course, none of this would matter if the actual film was bad. Thankfully, Jonze and Eggers have crafted a film that is truly remarkable in its refusal to be pigeonholed. Jonze’s idiosyncratic direction has always made the fantastical seem real palpable, from a portal into John Malkovich’s head to a mouse inside Kanye West’s gut, and the Wild Things and their environment are Jonze’s crowning triumph. With judicious use of computer-generated imagery and some absolutely stellar voice-acting, the Wild Things come to life with a simple, childish energy that makes their low points as devastating as their high points are joyous. They’re as real – perhaps even more real – than any person in the film, and Jonze, Eggers and the talented cast manage to create a realistic community of large children that are never two-dimensional or ingratiating to watch. Special mention must go to James Gandolfini, a man whose talents know no end and whose performance here as Carol is one of the most poignant, downright emotional performances of the year.

The island the Wild Things inhabit is the stuff of dreams, a combination of incompatible landscapes with giant dogs roaming the dunes and crevasses, trenches and hills dotting the horizon. It looks spectacular, almost as though Jonze were filming a nature documentary with his lens rather than a standard Hollywood film, and it’s hard to count how many times my breath was taken by the vistas. They mirror Max’s character perfectly and prove a perfect setting for the unconventional narrative – gone are Robert McKee’s introduction-conflict-resolution plotlines (as so mercilessly skewered in Jonze’s previous film, Adaptation) in favour of a more realistic, more human development of and resolution of the issues at the centre of childhood. Jonze and Eggers have the guts to not leave everything tied up in a neat bow, and they have the skill to pull it off without seeming cheap or as if they’ve run out of ideas.

Where the Wild Things Are is one of the finest films of a stellar year. A film more in tune with the mind of a child than any I’ve seen, Jonze and Eggers have created, between them, an aesthetic, narrative, and thematic masterpiece. And all from a sixteen page children’s book that consists mostly of a ‘Wild Rumpus’. . AG.

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It’s funny, it has taken Spike Jonze adapting a beloved children's book about growing up and finding yourself to make the most mature, grown up, and assured work of his career. Despite being based on Maurice Sendak's beloved bestseller, it is not a film for children. Indeed, the life lessons that the film teaches (friendships are temporary, finding yourself is hard, imagination is your greatest tool, childhood is over too quickly), are all lessons that have to be irrelevant to children, they are the things that, indeed, you have to learn for yourself. Which is why, perhaps that Where The Wild Things Are has struggled a little to find its audience. The natural audience are adults who are nostalgic for simpler times; presumably Warner Bros were a bit miffed they didn't get a children's film which they could happily sell to the little ones over the holidays.

What they did get though, is a beautiful ode to childhood. Unlike Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox, whose quirkiness felt more about the director than the book, Jonze has found the spirit of the original work, and worked it into his own vision, which with a book as slight as Where The Wild Things Are, he (and co-writer Dave Eggers, whose fingerprints are as obvious, if not more so than Jonze's) obviously needed to. The story follows Max, a lonely young boy, who is friendless and disconnected from his much older sister. His mum (Catherine Keener) has her heart in the right place, but is busy with her job and adult concerns. There isn't an obvious father figure. Mark Ruffalo is possibly mums boyfriend, but he's quite disconnected. So after not getting the attention he desires, Max runs away from home. He jumps in a boat, and goes off to a far off world of his imagination, where he meets the Wild Things, a disparate group all representing different aspects of his personality (the one who is never listened to, the imaginative one, the one who is independent) and flaws, and they make him king and he tries to bring them together.

The film avoids an easy 3-stage plot with easy lessons to be learned, but it certainly has a lot of heart, and isn't sappy in its nostalgia. However, it understands what it is like to be a child. This is more than helped by a wonderful central performance by Max Records. Apparently Warner Bros have put him forward for Oscar consideration, and it shouldn't be too far away, it is one of the great child performances. He understands the story, and deeply understands Max, essential in a character who is our host for the entire running time.

The film follows a child-logic that you have to go with. If you don't, you'll hate it.  But you have to remember that everything in the film is seen through the eyes of a young boy. So the island the Things live on can have a desert right next to a forest. The Wild Things can make him king because he imagines they can, although he struggles with the responsibility anyway.  Another thing that has to be mentioned is Karen O's beautiful score. Her voice never invades the film's space, but instead expands it, and adds an emotional depth and tangible feel to the film that could well be lost without it. . RS.

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It’s been ten years since Spike Jonze first disappeared down the rabbit hole with “Being John Malkovich”, which starred John Cusack as a slightly pretentious but deeply human puppeteer who finds a portal into the mind of actor John Malkovich. Acclaimed and enjoyable, BJM is a film about loneliness, alienation, and escape. It’s not odd, then, that “Where the Wild Things Are” – Jonze’s third feature film after the aforementioned and “Adaptation” – tackles very similar themes. However, this time around the protagonist is young Max (Max Records), who enjoys escaping into world of fairytale and adventure. He is initially bedazzled, then, when he ends up in a magical world where the only intelligent inhabitants seem to be a bunch of big-headed Wild Things, whose voice actors include James Gandolfini, Paul Dano, and Forest Whitaker.

One of the things that you’ll have heard about “Where the Wild Things Are” is that it is perhaps unsuitable to be viewed through a child’s eyes. I’m not quite sure if I agree or not. Part of me thinks that a lot of children will see the posters of these giant things with cute faces, and the trailer which seems so whole-heartedly happy, and want to see this film. And, when they get there, two scenes in particular will scare them witless. However, another part of me is on Jonze and writer Maurice Sendik’s side. I think a lot of people underestimate how much a child can separate fiction from reality, and although the introduction of the Bull and Carol’s rampage may have children watching through clenched fingertips, I don’t think it will keep them awake for too long. And anyway, Jonze has already made it perfectly clear that this isn’t a film for children, but instead a film about childhood intended for adults.

And it’s a wildly (pun not intended) enjoyable film from an adult’s perspective too, providing said adult hasn’t completely lost sight of the child within. It does indeed take a look at childhood, as well as the aforementioned themes of escape, alienation, and loneliness, and does so in an intelligent and well balanced way. It’s a look at childhood and its many pitfalls and problems – problems that seem so insignificant when you have a few years of understanding and experience under your belt – and how serious they seem at the time. However, Jonze never allows these musings to overwhelm the simple joys of the film. It’s a movie about adventure, and the sequences where Max and the Wild Things chase each other to the end of the island or take part in a mud fight are amongst its best. It re-captures the simple joys of youth through Max quite wonderfully, and it seems so much shorter than its one hundred minute runtime.

The main idea behind the film, I expect, is that it teaches Max a lesson about parenthood long before he’s meant to learn it, just so that he can have a little bit more respect for his mother. When on the island, he’s made king, and fights his very hardest to keep all seven of his at-first-loyal subjects together and happy. Carol represents his young self, potentially violent if angered but otherwise playful and exuberant and adventurous, whilst KW represents his sister, who is more willing to go off with her friends (Bob and Terry, a pair of squeaking, unintelligible birds) than stick around and play with Carol. It’s a decent commentary, and one which is very well observed. However, if this film is based so squarely at adults, then one wonders who this commentary is intended for. Surely, it’s a life lesson to children, telling them to respect your mother and father more because their job is a lot harder than it looks, but we’ve already established that the film isn’t for youngsters. In this way, and at other points when dialogue and plot points seem to be childlike in their simplicity, the objectives of “Where the Wild Things Are” do seem a tiny little bit muddled and unclear.

The acting, though, is another area that gets a big thumbs up. Catherine Keener and Mark Ruffalo don’t really make too much of an impression in their menial and minor roles at the very beginning, but young Max Records is superb in the lead role. He stumbles a little at the beginning, and the film’s major problem is that – for twenty minutes at least – Max seems a little bit of a brat and not as likeable as he should be. He gets over that, though, when he reaches the island, and is allowed to live out his wildest dreams of adventure. The voice cast is the true brilliance of the film, though, with everyone doing a quite marvellous job. James Gandolfini, as head Wild Thing Carol, is brilliant, often soft-spoken in a friendly giant kind of way, but with a truly Wild beast waiting just below the surface. He’s aided perfectly by Paul Dano, Chris Cooper, and Forest Whitaker, each of which putting in beautifully drawn performances with their own nuances and uniqueness.. JB.